Writing Under the Watch of Technology

“Content is king.”

Microsoft founder Bill Gates first said it in 1996, and you may have heard it often as you’ve continued on your career path.

Even as videos and podcasts increasingly command our attention, content remains king in any domain. Content still:

steers all we do online, whether it be informing an audience, promoting a product or service, or growing our reach through the search engines.
reinforces our brand as credible, knowledgeable and connected to a want or a need.
drives the main points of our digital contact (e.g. website, email, social media); striking visuals still need content that compels.

Today, however, King Content must be even more strategic and focused according to its context and platform in a vast, expanding cyberworld. We now write to algorithms, search engines and AI while we’re looking to connect with other people within a content infinity.

Satisfying technology’s demands of our content while still writing like humans to other humans is a taller order, but it’s also one we can achieve. Principles of good writing will remain regardless of where the digital rocket might take us.

The following are ways we can ensure our writing stays strong and relevant as we balance communication and technology.

Know your result. Each time you prepare to post content, understand the central “why” behind it. Why is the content meaningful, and why will your audience care?

Break up text. Long, thick paragraphs stress the mind even before it decides to engage any content. They often repel readers from the writing. Use short paragraphs and callouts or indentations to convey key points.

Keep sentences crisp. Good writing balances longer and shorter sentences. An average sentence length should be around 12-15 words most of the time. If you can make it even fewer without losing information or substance, that’s all the better.

Write with verifiable substance. Bad or incomplete information will run rampant where content is not properly gathered and vetted. Writing with earnest, accurate sourcing and research will deepen your appeal and credibility with both your audience and the search engines.

Writing for Information Gain

If you’re the expert behind a message, establish how and why you are a worthy resource. If you’re sharing information from beyond your purview, recognize who and what can be trusted enough for you to put your name by it. Keep records of your sources and citations and include them with your posted content when it’s called for.

Beyond making you a person or business that engenders trust, reinforcing your legitimacy will keep you in step with today’s concept of “information gain.” Engines such as Google and ChatGPT now apply greater methods to measure the value our content adds to the web.

In satisfying technology’s idea of information gain, we cannot simply repurpose or repackage old content or content that is already established by others online. To be noticed and read, our content must strive to be newly informative and fresh in perspective. It needs to offer data and insight that enhance readers’ knowledge and understanding.

By adapting to current technology while observing writing principles that will never age, we can provide content that achieves information gain with credence, precision and eloquence.

And that, in turn, can help elevate us to higher rankings, increasing engagement and, above all, growing audience faith.

Verbing: When Nouns Become Verbs

A fixed grammar lets us communicate with a clear, ordered structure we can all understand. Functioning as a GPS for directing our thoughts and ideas, it provides accurate markers and routes for moving our mind’s content into intelligible expressions.

While language is organized to unify understanding, it also can bend and flex to expand intentions of meaning, as well as adjust to the new ways we describe what is familiar.

One such bend and flex is verbing, the use of a noun as a verb. This exchange seems to be only increasing in modern American English, as in the following examples:

That channel now platforms McFarley’s opinions on growing red tomatoes.

I’m really glad that we met. Why don’t you friend me on Facebook?

If Masterson doesn’t readily know the answer, he should just Google it.

In each sentence, an established noun (platform, friend, Google) is conveying an action. Even the word verbing is an example of verbing:

Did they just say I should laptop my article notes? Are they really verbing that?

This tendency to convert speech parts follows natural language evolution. Verbing is a way of keeping English fresh, particularly among younger people. We are especially apt at verbing words that involve current technology and services:

They want to Zoom for the meeting.

Melissa told Adelina to YouTube the discussion.

I can’t talk now, but let’s FaceTime later!

My car’s in the shop. I say we Uber it tonight.

Verbing: It’s Nothing New

Verbing has been built into English for more than 1,000 years. Our modern use has simply made the practice increasingly inventive and obvious.

Signs of verbing appeared in Old English (app. 500–1100 A.D.). It also could be seen in Middle English (1100–1500), when, for example, the noun dark expanded into the verb to darken and the noun rain became a verb to describe the action, to rain.

By the era of William Shakespeare (late 1500s–early 1600s), verbing was thriving:

“Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncles.” — Richard II

“He words me.” — Hamlet

While some might argue that verbing lessens the distinction of English, we can’t escape that verbing is here to stay and will remain as long as its meanings are clear.

Some linguists estimate that more than 20% of English verbs originate from noun-to-verb conversion. Just a few words that began as strictly nouns before becoming well-understood verbs include access, bottle, debut, impact and pressure.

Verbing: More About Why

People turn nouns into verbs for different reasons, some of which we’ve already alluded to. We verbify nouns for:

efficiency and simplicity. Turning a noun into a verb can tighten expressions and make them more direct. Compare let’s iPad our notes with let’s make our notes in our iPads.

flexible expression. Verbing is one of the easiest ways to create new words through common use. Think of the presence of verbs such as Google, Zoom, and message in our daily lives.

adapting with culture and technology. As new tools, trends, apps, and platforms emerge, we can expect more verbing in the future. This is especially true of actions that become indistinct from their brands: “Venmo me,” “We should DoorDash dinner tonight.” 

greater creativity of expression. Verbing lets us be creative and playful with our everyday speech: “I’m done adulting for today,” “I think Lizette is going to ghost me,” “Jack and Jill said they’re going to Netflix and chill tonight.”

While verbing adds breadth and versatility to American English, we also want to be careful about context. Verbing is casual, colloquial usage that may not always be proper in formal communication. As with any other message we share, we should consider our audience.

Similarly, verbing often arises from cultural trends and references, many of which tend to fade as times change. Too much verbing can make new colloquialisms grating and stale and hasten their demise.

Verbing: Ways to Verb a Noun

Nouns have a few different means of morphing into verbs.

Direct Conversion (Zero Derivation): No change in spelling or form

email > I’ll email you the details.

chair > She chaired the meeting.

butter > Can you butter the bread?

Affixation: Adding verb suffixes such as -ize, -ify, or -en

apology  > apologize (He apologized for losing her Taylor Swift tickets.)

beauty > beautify (Sara beautified Stan’s originally garish outfit.)

strength > strengthen (The sales manager believes we can strengthen the numbers.)

Back-Formation: Removing suffixes from nouns

babysitter > babysit (Raj babysat the Abassis’ six greyhound dogs.)

editor > edit (Someone needs to edit Uri’s résumé.)

option > opt (Fans are now opting not to pay $18 for a beer at concerts.)

Functional Shift: Slight change of meaning from noun to verb

book > Have you booked the vacation cruise yet?

ship (vessel) > The delivery was supposed to have been shipped last week.

text > Please advise Enrique not to text about our plans to unload our company stock.

Metaphorical Extension: Shifting of nouns to verbs through figurative meaning

bridge > We need to bridge the gap between the quality of your guitar and mine.

shoulder > Hank shouldered the burden of having to weed the yard.

host > Chenda is hosting the neighborhood block party this year.

You’ll also often notice that simply adding the suffix -d or -ed will change many nouns into verbs: e.g. download > downloaded, paint > painted, task > tasked.

Writing with Meaningful Restraint

The art of writing concerns style and form as much as it does clarity and grammatical accuracy. Technically proper sentences can be operative but uninspiring if not also touched by feeling and flow.

Consider the following pair:

     He fully opened the window and looked at the sunset. It had been a long day. He was ready to put it behind.
     He opened wide the window and gazed at the setting sun, which slowly closed the day he knew he must forget.

The first sentence succeeds in conveying information in plain, short, linear thoughts. The second one puts us in the same spot with the same person doing the same thing, yet it offers more imagery, depth and even mystery, all guided by rhythm and sound.

As writers, we want to spark readers’ minds in interesting, original ways. At the same time, we want to maintain self-awareness and balance. Just as a cake can have too much frosting, so can our writing have an excess of flair.

When we are composing, we should be mindful of whether we are drawing more attention to words than to ideas. Perhaps motivated by giants of literature we have read, we may try to compose our own grand expressions, thinking that real writers aim high.

Unfortunately, until we have practiced and perfected the skills we admire, we can produce sentences such as this one:

     With an iron will forged on the anvil of conviction, the solitary traveler with the aching, calloused, sandaled feet crossed the rolling blanket of desert dunes toward the flaming horizon from which the unforgiving heat like a colossal palm pressed down.

While we may not fault the ambition behind such writing, we can agree it tries too hard. We sense the writer’s inflated excitement that he or she might be starting to sound literary. By focusing on being less “fine,” we could express the same sentence as:

     Feet revolting, will unyielding, the traveler crossed the desert alone, pushing through the pressing heat toward the horizon that had to be reached.

We also want to avoid writing that aims to be “poetic,” particularly if it is clichéd or otherwise unoriginal. Authentic poetry has its place throughout our language when it is shared by those who have mastered the form. For the rest of us, we will serve all (including ourselves) by refraining from phrases such as lips red like the rose, her raindrop tears, eye of night (meaning the moon) or ocean blue like the sky, as well as archaic words such as oft, alas, ere and ’twas.

Let us likewise be wary of too much alliteration, which is the repetition of vowels or consonants in the same line, especially at the beginning of words (desert dunes, opened wide the window). When applied with skilled moderation, it can make writing pleasing and memorable. When unleashed, it can lead to grating passages such as the fate that forged friends from forgotten fields in France.

Art is often driven by passion, and that spirit tends to dislike self-control; rather, it prefers to run freely in releasing thoughts and emotions. We will make a greater mark as writers if we harness its strength in the right ways at the right moments through restraint that shapes technique.